Newcastle United manager Alan Pardew using non-league tricks on Premier League players

John Mackie, his name was. “Centre-half,” Alan Pardew recalls with a glint of
recognition in his eye, the years rolling away in his mind. “Good player.
Tough. Did well for me at Reading. Stayed in the pro game for a little
while. Not sure where he is now.”

Big ambition: Alan Pardew is hoping his Newcastle squad is more settled this seasonPhoto: ACTION IMAGES

A free transfer from Sutton United in 1999, Mackie was the first player Pardew signed as a manager. In those days, Pardew admits, transfer deals were done over “a bag of balls and a grand here and there”. Now, he sells players for £35 million.

The arrival of Joe Kinnear as director of football has been poorly received by Newcastle fans and poses a direct threat to Pardew’s own authority.

The modern transfer is a kitchen-sink drama with an ensemble cast, thick with smouldering intrigue and layers of plot.

“Layers is a good word to use,” he says. “Not only do you usually have an egotistic owner at one end and an egotistic owner at the other, but sometimes a technical director, and then a manager. An agent; sometimes two. Then the family get involved. All these people have to be satisfied in one form or another. It can get very, very messy.”

In the circumstances, Newcastle’s strike rate in the transfer market appears rather commendable. “We have to think out of the box a little,” Pardew says. “We have to look at people who haven’t quite arrived, like Moussa Sissoko, Yohan Cabaye, or Cheick Tioté. They’re a bit more difficult to find, and [chief scout] Graham Carr has done a great job.

“He’ll throw two or three players at me, and I’ll nail it down to one, maybe two. Then, where we used to pass it on to Derek Llambias, now we pass it on to Joe Kinnear, and he tries to find a financial deal. If we can’t do the deal, then we have to look again at our third choice. I’m not going to tell you which were which, but some players we’ve bought have been first pick, and some have been third. And a couple of the thirds were more successful than a couple of the firsts.”

It has been a quiet transfer window for Newcastle, with loan signing Loïc Rémy the only arrival so far.

“I think our squad is more than deep enough,” Pardew says. “We brought some guys in during the last window to address that. What does Rémy bring? Instantaneous – goal. A goal from nothing. We need that element of surprise.”

Rémy is the 11th Frenchman in the Newcastle squad. Striker Bafétimbi Gomis – whose move from Lyon is, contrary to reports, still on – would be the 12th.

“It’s word of mouth,” Pardew says with pride. “We’ve got that reputation in France for looking after players. Off the pitch as well. We’ve got a good game plan in terms of looking after where they live, and are proactive in making sure they take their English lessons.”

In the age of the sporting director and the specialist coach, a far larger proportion of a manager’s job consists of just that: managing. Creating the right blend within a squad is an underrated skill in the modern game with its polyglot dressing rooms. And it is here that Pardew’s mud-flecked background – the jobbing non-League amateur made good – is most useful.

He was 26 before he turned professional. Until then, his career was a sideline wrapped tautly around his day job as a glazier; a montage of unheated non-League grounds and lumpy training pitches like the one at Raynes Park FC, where we are speaking.

Pardew is an ambassador for Budweiser Club Futures, who made a £50,000 grant to Raynes Park last season. The money has paid for a renovation of the clubhouse, a new roof, a new mower, and much else. For Pardew, born just up the road in Wimbledon, returning has been something of a labour of love.

“I played here three or four times,” he remembers. “I understand how important the local team is to the community, and how difficult it is with finance. These grants are absolutely essential for clubs like this.

“Coaxing people to come and train on a Thursday night after work is a skill, and I like to think I’ve taken a few of those skills into the leadership that I do. One of the biggest pieces of advice I got from Sir Bobby Robson was that you need to get the atmosphere right in the dressing room.”

To his South London street-smarts, Pardew has added a voracious appetite for the science and psychology of football, and a willingness to embrace the unconventional.

“I read Freakonomics this summer,” he says, referring to the 2005 pop-economics book. “The authors give an example of an Israeli kindergarten where the ladies kept picking up their children late. They imposed a fine of £20 an hour, or something, which was far too small. So now they were turning up five hours late, because the penalty didn’t outweigh the problem.

“I love things like that, because some of the finance in football has thrown the fine system completely out of the window. So you’ve got to find other ways to bring discipline. Things like that made me think about getting players to buy into the system, buy into the cause, rather than a petty fine.”

So what does he make of the blend in the Newcastle dressing room? “Last year, we were a young side,” he says. “We probably needed a bit more experience in the team, so that’s something we’ve looked at this year. Making sure that some players take on a few more leadership qualities. Cabaye, for example, I’m looking for a bit more leadership from him. I’m looking for Tim Krul to be a leader for the team.

“The bottom line,” he explains with an air of the grey-haired philosopher about him – the Wimbledon Wittgenstein, the Merton Malthus – “is that all football teams are made up of very similar characters, whatever level you’re at. You’ve got your miserable one, the one who’s out of the team. You’ve got your funny one, your clever one, your skilful one. And you have to blend it all together. That’s the same at non-league as it is at the highest level.”

Alan Pardew is backing the Budweiser Club Futures programme www.TheFa.com/BudweiserClubFutures